From front-yard practice to international competition: London sculptor heads north

What began as a front-yard experiment is now taking a London, Ont., sculptor to a global snow carving stage in Yellowknife.

Graham Henning has kept busy during recent snow storms, transforming the shape of built up snow and carving it into the unexpected. Each day, details appear where there were none before, edges are refined and textures emerge.

“When you drive by it, it might look like just a mound of snow,” said Graham Henning “unless you kind of slow down and take a look and think for a second.”

The London-based sculptor is using his front yard as a practice space ahead of the Snowkings' Winter Festival in Yellowknife, where his sculpture Snow popcorn will be displayed alongside snow sculptures by artists from across the world for the International Snow Carving Symposium.

The festival runs through March and includes an international snow carving symposium, which brings teams from around the world to create large-scale sculptures over several days.

Henning’s interest in making things began early.

“I always had an interest in art, sculpture and building things with my hands,” he said. “Whether it was building tree forts or whatever when I was a kid, doing the sculpture was kind of like a next level of building things.”

He studied art at Beal Secondary School in London and later the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in Halifax, before taking a different path.

“I ended up making a lot of sculptures in school, and then not really knowing if I wanted to do that as a career, and ended up doing construction,” Henning said.

More recently, Henning has found his way back to sculpting, fitting it into a life shaped by practical work and competing demands.

“In our society, so many of us are chasing money,” he said. “But nourishing your other interests is really satisfying.”

That mindset has led him to a new opportunity far from his London home, especially after he learned about the Snowkings' Winter Festival through a former art school classmate.

Henning is excited about the competition not only for himself, but for what it could represent.

“I’m proud of being from London,” he said. “We’ve always had a great art scene that’s a little bit underground and not maybe quite as showcased as, you know, bigger centres like Toronto.”